St-Patrick’s Day Parade 2015 in Montreal

On an extremely cold day in Montreal I sketched this looking west on Ste-Catherine Street just in front of Christ Church Cathedral. Morning temperature was minus 15 degrees Celcius, so I decided to leave my watercolors home and draw with felt pen and Prismacolor pencils. My strategy was to draw the location of the scene leaving enough space to fill in the Parade marchers and a float. Since security was at its height due to a threat to disrupt the parade by a group of protesters I chose to include a police car in the foreground. The car wasn’t going anywhere so I felt it would serve as a good measuring stick. I then added the two security policemen since they seemed too cold to move, making for an easy draw. Once the skeleton of the buildings and some people was inked in with a .03 permanent felt pen in the Moleskine 8 x 10 in book I proceeded to add some shading. At this point,I retreated inside since my fingers were numb. At a table at the food court I added some color before returning outside. This time I added a second pair of mittens (the kind that splits in two to let the fingers protrude) over my rubber covered texting gloves. I find these are ideal for pencil drawing in cold weather since the rubber texture adheres to a pencil, pen or brush. (I found these gloves at a Hart store) By the time the Parade started to flow by I had pretty well drawn the set-up. I quickly drew the St-Patrick figure float in outline and a goup holding a banner. Alternating 10 or so minutes inside and out (using the metro exits as warm refuge) I completed three quarters of the drawing. Later, in a cafe, with a hot cup in hand I finalized it by intensifiying the color and shading.